


Compass (Let me be yours)

by quicklittlebasterd



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Sara Lance Needs a Hug, Slow Build, The League of Assassins (DCU), i'll get the hang of it, new to tagging
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:41:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29013753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicklittlebasterd/pseuds/quicklittlebasterd
Summary: A chance encounter in time sends Sara Lance into a soul searching spiral to figure out what going home actually means and if one can even make a home with a fractured soul.
Relationships: Amaya Jiwe & Sara Lance, Nyssa al Ghul/Sara Lance, Sara Lance & Felicity Smoak
Comments: 15
Kudos: 46





	1. Al-Owal

Gideon’s clear voice began to ring out once the Legends had managed to gather around the center console, “The Anachronism takes place in Caracas 1985. The assassination attempt on local diplomat-”

“Wait, assassination? I thought this was a level one?” Amaya frowned, eyes immediately zeroing in on their Captain, Sara Lance.

“According to the map it is,” Sara shrugged, “not all assassinations have huge global impacts. Most are meant to only cause small waves, a way to turn the tide in certain controllable directions. Gideon? Who do we have to protect?”

“His name is Emmanual Herrera III and his death isn’t the anachronism, his life is.”

“So something or someone stopped the assassination?”

“Indeed, Captain Lance. In the original timeline, the attempt was successful and his political rival was able to take office.”

“How impacted is the timeline if one person is just allowed to live?” Zari interrupted, mind still tripping over the casual way Sara spoke of murder for hire. “It’s only a level one and Caracas is notoriously one of the most dangerous places in the world even in my time, so Herrera’s life or death can’t make too much of a difference.”

“The job is to fix all of the anachronisms,” Sara pressed her lips, a tension headache beginning to spread along the base of her skull, “not just the ones we want to.”

“I just think we have more important matters to worry about. Between running into baby Ray and Mick’s dad-”

“-And young Marty with the Vikings,” Ray piped in with a wave of his hands.

Zari bobbed her head in agreement, “And that, the Darhks are clearly looking for ways to mess with us and as far as I can tell it’s working.”

“Plus,” Amaya crossed her arms and frowned down at the Venezuelan headlines currently displayed on the console monitor in front of her, “We really need to start focusing on locating the totems.”

Sara frowned and swiped across the screen before her, eyes darting about as she took in the pre- and post- changed news stories. The team was still recovering from the loss of Martin and Jax, and their disappointing performance against Mallus that had lost them the young Nora Darhk had left them bitter and demoralized. It seemed to make them want to hide for a moment and give them a chance to lick their wounds. It made Sara want to punch something. She made a choice. “You’re both right.”

“I am?” Zari pointed at herself.

Amaya looked between them and their captain, “We are?” 

“Sure,” Sara shrugged, “Amaya and Nate, go and dig deep into the totems. Ray and Z, with Jax gone I need you guys keeping the  _ Waverider _ in tiptop shape, run whatever diagnostics you need to make sure Z’s loophole program hasn’t had any unforeseen consequences. And Mick-” she swung around the room as everyone began looking around in confusion, “Mick is already gone.” She pressed her lips to hide a half smile, “Great. Get to it people.”

With a wave of her hands they all dispersed with the usual chatter and Sara remained, frowning down at the screen with narrowed eyes. 

“Is everything alright, Captain?” Gideon’s voice echoed warmly around her in the sudden quiet.

“This was a League hit, wasn’t it, Gideon? Garrote with no mess,” she twitched her finger to zoom in on the accompanying photos, “no witnesses and no leads.”

“It would appear that way, Captain. Would you like me to plot a course?”

“No,” she shuffled the pages around, “I’ll take the jumpship.”

-

Sara slipped through the crowds with minimal jostling, drawing neither eyes nor attention from anyone around her. It was amazing how easily she slipped back into her training, stretching her senses for maximum awareness as she filtered out the heat and the dust and the inane noises that ultimately were meaningless to the hunt. 

The hunt.

Her step faltered as she remembered her last official hunt. And how it had ended so abruptly with three arrows to the belly and a short stumble to a long fall. She had always had a penchant for fucking up all of the good things in her life and while everything had started going to shit long before that night, it had still been particularly harsh. What with the dying and all.

From the corner of her eye she caught a form slipping parallel along the marketplace avenue, recognizing them from the manner that they moved and avoided detection from all in the general public. Sara wasn’t the only one out on a hunt. 

She slowed, stepping around a group of locals, and redirected her focus on the other assassin. Down streets and through several sketchy alleyways, she kept the dark form in her sights until finally she rounded a corner and they were nowhere in sight. Sara suppressed a smirk and was prepared to settle into the wait but it was barely minutes later when she felt the familiar press of a dagger tip at her back. She breathed lightly, barely expanding her lungs and catalogued the threat between her lower ribs and just above her right kidney, a quick and near assured death.

“ _ You are following me _ ,” a male voice rumbled in blissfully familiar Arabic.

“ _ By the will of Ra’s al Ghul, _ ” she replied in a low voice, _ “I am Ta-er al-Sahfer and I am here to offer you aid in your hunt.” _

The pressure at her back lessened but she did not hear the telltale hiss of a blade being resheathed. “ _ I do noT know you, Ta-er al-Sahfer, but if the Head of the Demon has willed it then so it shall be.” _

Turning slowly, she waited as he lowered the hood of his jacket and suddenly she was looking up at dark eyes set in a very familiar face. His smile was tense and did not reach his eyes and it was every bit a punch to the gut as the last time he had literally punched her in the gut. “ _ Al-Owal,”  _ she breathed.

He frowned immediately, eyes taking in anything and everything about her that he might not have already assessed. “ _ You have me at a disadvantage, Ta-er al-Sahfer. You appear to know me but I know that I do not know you.” _

Sara wanted to curse and rail against whatever twist of fate had brought her her, but she swallowed it down with the sick feeling in her stomach,  _ “It’s complicated. I’ll can try and explain later but until then, tell me about your hunt.” _

-

It was a small Anachronism, a new and apparently highly skilled Hollywood bodyguard had interrupted Al-Owal and the man he had been partnered with at the last moment and since then the diplomat had completely changed up his routine and rendered all of the older assassin’s surveillance obsolete. The partner hadn’t survived the ensuing encounter and Al-Owal had been merely frustrating himself, trying to find an in that he could exploit before the target could get his policies into place.

Sara went with him as he made the rounds again, listening as he described the target and his plan and together they began forming new ideas as though they had been working together for ages.

In the League the mission usually dictated how many were sent out, from solo run to partnered or entire teams. In the early days - before the Demon’s Head had decided she was worthy - Sara had usually paired with Nyssa or been part of a larger team. After taking her Oath, there had been more than a few solo hunting trips and ones with other members of the League, but Sara had never run a mission with Al-Owal before.

It was… surprisingly pleasant. 

He was funny in a dry way. He knew his mission but he also knew his limits within said mission and was able to disengage from the seriousness of their situation and take in the sights and people around them. 

“ _ We will get no work done while the sun is out, we will strike tonight. I think we have made all the plans we are going to make, _ ” he reached out to finger the lapel of her nondescript black jacket, “ _ Do you have your armour at your safe house?” _

She nodded, feeling the lump in her throat at the thought of the studded leather and steel plating that were normally kept in the back of her closet on the  _ Waverider _ , but was currently stored in her duffle on the jumpship sitting invisible atop an abandoned warehouse some blocks away. “ _ I’ll meet you back here at 2300 hours?” _

He dipped his chin in a sort of head nod,  _ “Until then, Ta-er al-Sahfer _ .”

She returned the gesture and watched as he disappeared into the teeming crowd before turning on her heel to make her way back in the opposite direction.

She was only mildly surprised to see the shimmering outline of the invisible  _ Waverider _ as she finished climbing the ladder to the rooftop, with Amaya and Nate waiting for her on the gangplank in the late afternoon heat. 

Shrugging out of her jacket, she restlessly began picking at the fingers of her gloves, debating taking them off while duly ignoring Amaya’s crossed arms and narrowed features.

“I thought we agreed this wasn’t important,” was what the totem-bearer led with.

“No, you all decided it wasn’t important,” Sara waved her hand around in a vague encompassing gesture, “I decided it was.”

“Sara,” the other woman sighed and Sara chuckled, the exasperated tone with which her name had been spoken was infinitely more familiar to her than the title of Captain.

“I looked into it further after we found you and the jumpship missing, this was a League hit wasn’t it?” Nate glanced between the two women and startled when Sara shoved her discarded jacket at him as she walked by to retrieve her gear from the jumpship.

“I’ve already made contact, we’ve established a course of action and by tomorrow history will be back on track, the Anachronism back in his own timeline, and we’ll be back in the temporal zone. No problemo.”

“Captain!” Nate looked around wildly, “Why would you say that? Now you’re going to have so many problemos!”

“Relax, Nate,” she dropped the duffle and began tugging out her armour, “I know what i’m doing.”

“Did you have Gideon fabricate you League wear? Oh my god! Can I have Gideon make me an assassin outfit?” his eyes were shining as he clapped his hands together in a pleading gesture.

“Definitely not,” she poked him solidly in the chest and he winced back, “And no, these are mine.”

“Sara, don’t you think you might be too close to this?” Amaya reached out and covered the hand that was clutching at the armour with her own. 

“I appreciate the concern, honestly, but can you please trust me when I say I know what I’m doing.” She pulled back, laying the jacket down and picking up her collapsed weapon. “But first my new assassin friend is going to need a demonstration of skill.”

“And how is he supposed to get that?” 

There was a quick succession of soft sounds; a thin whistling of metal through the air, the clattering of Sara’s bo fully extending in quick rotations and then the metallic  _ clank _ as the two objects collided. This was all followed closely by Nate’s sharp yelp as he was startled backwards into tripping over his own feet while Amaya crouched protectively over his prone figure. 

Al-Owal stepped up from behind a low concrete wall mere feet away, dressed now in his League armor though his head remained uncovered. He did not seem particularly put out that his throwing knife had not met its mark, as instead he smiled. Amaya’s hand immediately went to her totem but Sara gently tapped her wrist with the end of her bo.

“Don’t interfere. Al-Owal has every right to be suspicious, we shouldn’t expect anything less.”

“I am indeed suspicious, Ta-er al-Sahfer,” the assassin agreed in English for the benefit of their mixed group, fingers tapping on the hilt of the sword he wore at his hip, “You have appeared from the ether and offered to me your aid. You know my name, you know my mission and you know my ways.”

“But you don’t know me,” Sara shrugged and did not try to hide or explain away the strange ships that were parked behind her and her team that had caught the older man’s obvious attention.

“No,” he hummed and wandered around her in a relaxed manner, bemused at the discomfort rolling off the two unknown entities sitting along the sidelines, “Though I suppose there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for that.”

“There is,” she nodded, letting her weapon rest against her shoulder as she tightened her ponytail, “Would you like to hear it?”

“In a moment,” he drew his sword as he came to face her and gave it a few wide arching swings, “Are you prepared? Would you like to choose a different weapon?”

“I’m good,” her bo sung as she cut it sharply through the air around her head and body, “Want to take off your jacket? It’s pretty warm.”

“No, I have trained with it on. Would you like to wear yours?”

Her White Canary leathers were less bulky than her League wear and while she was confident in her ability to wear and perform in them again, she preferred the better range of motion she had in the simple tank top she was currently wearing. “This is fine.”

There was no discernable beginning to their match, slowly they just began to circle one another and Sara felt her awareness flux and shift so she could filter out the things that were not important, like the remaining members of her team as they began to drift out the time ship and settle in worriedly (expect for Mick, who had brought a six pack and a lawn chair). 

Al-Owal’s face slipped into impassivity and his eyes deadened so as to give nothing away. But Sara had the advantage, as had been said time and again, because she did indeed know him and he did not know her. His impatience had often been a marker of his ferocity, and it had apparently been a problem he had long before her time in the League. He struck out first, low and sweeping, letting the leathers of his armor flair out in a tight and controlled spin. Sara struck down at an angle, catching the edge of his blade on her bo and shoving it off and away from her and at the same time jumped, kicking out and catching her feet against the planes of his back. He stumbled forward, the force of her action pushing herself backwards but rather than try to land on her feet she merely tucked and allowed the momentum to tumble her fully until she could spring back up with more space between them. 

The distance was a blessing, as the other assassin was already charging at her. Her heartbeat thrummed in her ears and she felt herself grin. They clashed again and again, neither gaining or losing ground for any discernable time. The rooftop became a playground, every wall and door and metal vent being used as a stop or springboard as they danced around one another. Al-Owal drew first blood, the sharp edge of his straight kris sword catching her shoulder as she twisted too close to tangle her bo between his feet, but it wasn’t nearly the last blood drawn. They both managed to make more than a few non-lethal hits but it wasn’t until she managed to land a solid blow to the underside of his jaw that would have laid out a lesser man that he stopped her, holding a hand up in a pausing gesture. To her utter surprise, he laughed- deeply and readily and with more amusement and joy than she had ever associated with the man. Then he coughed and turned his head to spit out a fair amount of blood.

The tone of his whole demeanor changed then, as he shrugged out of his armour jacket and grinned at her, white teeth gleaming against bright red blood.

_ “Again?” _ he asked her, Arabic slipping more naturally from his tongue, as he crouched and extended his sword in a new ready stance.

Sara snapped her bo into it’s two batons and twirled them experimentally, testing the stretch of her muscles and soreness of the wounds she’d received. “ _ Again _ .”

Sitting on the gangplank, the Legends sat in near stunned silence as their Captain and her new assassin friend verily beat the hell out of each other.

“So,” Nate rubbed his chest where a phantom pain lingered, “can we all agree that Sara goes hella easy on us in training?” 

-

“ _ The future, then _ ?” Al-Owal asks much later, accepting the bottle of water from the smaller blonde woman. The sun was beginning to rise and with it the stifling tropical heat was threatening to overtake the day again. He was grateful for his hunt to have concluded so he could make his way back to Nanda Parbat.

“Mhm,” Ta-er al-Sahfer stretched out next to him, her own water half gone. He looked back towards the open hatch behind them, disconcerting as the rest of the ship was currently invisible. They were alone at the moment, save for the sounds of the city beneath them. There was a large, time-displaced bodyguard sleeping off a tranquilizer in the brig inside the ship and a dead diplomat in the hotel room thirty-four blocks southeast of them. 

“ _ You are no longer in the service of Ra’s al Ghul _ .” It was not a question, he did not miss the way her teammates referred to her as  _ Captain _ and  _ Sara _ . She had reclaimed her old identity, or perhaps another new one. 

“ _ He saw fit to release me _ .” It wasn’t a lie, in 1960 Ra’s had released her from her oath.

Solemnly, Al-Owal picked up the League armored jacket that she had folded carefully between them before her recline. Supple black leather, well oiled and cared for, some of the steel studs were newer than others as they had been replaced when damaged and all throughout a single red thread along the stitching. “ _ And your Beloved?” _

He caught ice blue eyes watching his every move, her body suddenly a coiled spring that might snap at the slightest provocation. Gently he laid the jacket down.

“ _ She saw fit to release me as well. _ ”

-

She offered to drop him off closer to Nanda Parbat, but Al-Owal disclosed that he actually enjoyed the long journeys. He told her that he found it to be similar to mediation and it did a great deal of soothing for his soul. Before departing, he had offered her a gift wrapped in dark leather and a wry, “ _ Until we meet again, Ta-er al-Sahfer.” _

She gave him a tight smile, more like a grimace, and held up the memory flasher, “ _ Until then, Al-Owal. _ ”

-

“He was your teacher.”

Amaya leant against the doorway of Sara’s office, watching her as she flipped a small curved dagger around by the metal ring at the end of the hilt. A mostly empty glass of what was probably bourbon sat on the desk next to where she had kicked up her feet. 

“He was one of them,” Sara confirmed, tilting her head back to get a better look at the woman she called friend and wondered how much longer that would last, “His last mission was to bring me back to the League.”

“Bring you back?”

“I ran away,” she shrugged, refocusing on the blade in her hands and testing its edge against her thumbnail, “I guess you could say I had a crisis of faith. But mostly I was just young and selfish and so, so fucking stupid and I just..” she waved her hand, the dagger flipped around deadly with the gesture, “left. Like a coward.”

Amaya made her way into the room, “You didn’t want to be a killer anymore, so you got yourself out. Seems pretty brave to me.”

_ Thump. _

The blade tip dug heavily into the wooden desktop and Amaya jumped. Sara swallowed heavily and the other woman was shocked to see tears beginning to well in the Captain’s eyes, “I left and when I did, I broke more than my oath to Ra’s and the League. I broke the heart of the love of my life. I ran away from the greatest thing that ever happened to me because that’s just what I do. I take wonderful, beautiful things and I poison them. It wasn’t brave to leave in the middle of the night without a word, it was shameful and disgusting and soulless.”

“Sara..” Amaya all but collapsed in the chair opposite her friend, so utterly devastated for her that her very spirit ached.

But Sara waved a hand, free now as the dagger was still stuck in the desk, in a halting motion before reaching for the glass of alcohol and downing what was left in it. “Al-Owal came to Starling to bring me back so I killed him. I snapped his neck. I can’t even remember hesitating.”

“You aren’t that person anymore,” Amaya implored, reaching across the desk to grasped Sara’s hand in between her own. 

Sara rotated her hand so the other woman could more easily tangle their fingers together but she did not try to hold her hand back, “Aren’t I?”

-

Some time later, after Amaya had tired of her friend’s brooding and drawn out a promise of  _ bed, soon? _ and Sara had given her own self a massive stress headache that hadn’t been helped by alcohol or overthinking. Tugging at the handle of the dagger that Al-Owal had gifted her, very likely the one he had threatened her life with at their first meeting if certain traditions remained, she freed it from the desktop and slid her pointer finger in the ring at the base of the hilt.

With a sudden bout of decisiveness, you grabbed her tablet with her free hand and pulled up a familiar contact page. She needed a friendly face and Felicity Smoak had the friendliest face of everyone she knew. 


	2. Damned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exploring the darkness within.

“Is that Sara? Sara! You haven’t been answering my calls.”

She’d barely gotten a greeting in before the screen swiveled and Oliver Queen in Arrow eyeshadow hijacked the communication and ruined whatever hope she’d had at recovering a decent mood before bed. 

Biting off her initial response, Sara settled into her usual grin and snark. “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Felicity Smoak.”

“Oh! I like it,” came Felicity’s voice from the background but Oliver only spared her a fond glance before he turned his focus back on the screen in front of him.   
“Sara, did your team trash a coffee shop in Central City a few days ago?” 

The headache suddenly doubled and began to pound behind her eyes, although if it was from Oliver’s self-righteous tone or the reminder of that rather spectacular failure she wasn’t sure. “Was that only a few days ago? Damn.” She rubbed at her eyes and studiously ignored Oliver’s frown, “Yeah, that was us. But I already apologized to Caitlin and Barry and we helped clean up before we got out of town.”

He didn’t appear to hear her.

“I don’t like the way the reports read, Sara,” he shuffled through something on the screen to his right, “it sounds an awful lot like occult activity and there was a kid involved.” 

“Yeah, I know. I read the report too,” she snapped and swallowed the urge to growl, hackles raised at the implication that it was his job to check up on her. 

“Sara-” he said it like a warning, telling her to temper herself like she was one of the kids on his team, and suddenly she was beyond exhausted.

“Kid was Nora Darhk, Ollie.”

That certainly got his attention. “What the hell were you doing with Damien Darhk’s kid, Sara?”

“The fuck you think we were doing, Oliver? She was with Ray freaking Palmer for fuck’s sake.” She tried to drag up that fury from earlier but was far too hollow and drained to feel much of anything, “She’s a kid, we were just trying to help.”

With the fight no longer in her, Oliver seemed to deflate. His tone shifted and his eyes softened but she found she could no longer meet them, “Sara, I didn’t mean-”

“He was there too, you know,” she pulled her feet up onto the chair so she could wrap her arms around her knees and make herself small, “That wasn’t in the report.”

Oliver just blinks at her, as if he’s going to be able to unpack all of that by sheer force of will. He glances back at his wife who waves a hand as if to say,  _ you got yourself into this, now you better finish it.  _ “What’s going on, Sara?”

But how does she even begin to explain everything that has happened since Eobard Thawne and the Spear of Destiny came into play. Altered realities and broken time, vampires and zombies and a league hit with a mentor whose neck she’d snapped years before (later?). A demon that wants possession of her soul and a dark heart and nightmares of blood raining down on her and how she can feel herself fracturing because all this pressure is collapsing down onto her and she has nothing inside to hold herself up.

“Don’t worry about it, Ollie,” she sighed, “We have it covered.”

-

He had wanted to argue further, had indeed started to, but Felicity steered him away with a call to arms with Dig and waited until he left to turn back to Sara. “I’m sorry,” she winced, “I shouldn’t have let him hijack the conversation. We don’t get to talk that often and I really miss you.”

“It’s alright, we both know how he gets when the more dangerous situation is out of his hands.”

“And is it?” Felicity had a way of cutting through the layers Sara barricaded herself with that had only ever been matched by two others in her life, “A more dangerous situation?”

Sara raised a hand and made a wavering gesture, “Ish?”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Know anything about demon possessions? Shadow dimensions? Damned souls?”

“Uh,” the tech genius blinked, clearly not having expected that line of thought. She clicked her tongue and screwed up her eyes in thought, “No.”

“Yeah,” Sara sighed and uncurled her legs to stretch. Rubbing at her eyes she wanted nothing more than to put everything down and sleep for a decade, “We’re fumbling our way through it too. Listen, it’s been a long day and we both have a lot going on-”

“Sara,” Felicity gently broke in, fingers curling as if to reach out. She recognized that broken look in her friend’s eyes the moment the call had connected, “I don’t really know, uh, anything about all that. Not really. But if it’s your soul we’re talking about then I’m not worried. I know you and I know your heart and I know that even though you are made of broken and jagged pieces you are good and kind and wonderful. You have a good soul, Sara. Oliver and Laurel wouldn’t have brought you back a bad one.”

-

Felicity couldn’t stand the emptiness that had begun to creep into Sara’s eyes during her conversation with Oliver (interrogation, really, and she was going to have words with her husband about that) and she was reluctant to let her go. But Sara hadn’t said much after that and Felicity didn’t want to push so even though it broke her heart, they said their goodbyes with promises of speaking soon.

With a heavy groan, Felicity took off her glasses and rested her chin atop her folded hands. Staring at the black screen she replayed the entire conversation over and over in her head, trying to find a place to dig in and start trying to help. But this wasn’t a tech problem, this wasn’t something she could write an algorithm for or hack her way into for more information. This was a different sort of entirely complicated problem. It was occult, it was magic. It was…  _ spiritual. _ And while Felicity had her faith, returned souls and Lazarus Pits weren’t exactly covered in the Torah. 

So Felicity decided to do what she did whenever she came across a problem in which she wasn’t an expert. She contacted an expert. 

-

Sara wasn’t having a very good couple of weeks. After a more than disastrous attempt at normal dating that left her skin itching and chest physically aching, the loss and subsequent retrieval of one Dr. Ray Palmer, the gaining of three totems and the extremely unfortunate loss of Amaya’s Anansi Totem, Sara very much wanted to just  _ hit _ something. 

And to add insult to injury there was Ava’s cold shoulder, a frustratingly reinstated Agent Rip Hunter and a new teammate. 

A new speedster teammate. Sara was incredibly leery of speedsters. Sure, Wally seemed decent and Barry was great but she’d spent however many months (years? spending so much time in the Temporal Zone and skipping about the timeline made it ridiculously hard to tack down) perpetually three steps behind Eobard Thawne to ever be comfortable with those who could regularly break the sound barrier. 

So yes, even though Wally West seemed like a nice enough kid, Sara still felt the need to drive her fists into something with as much force as she was capable of. Unfortunately, the kid was still getting his sea legs around the Legends and his run through the  _ Waverider _ ended abruptly as he sped his way through the captain’s workout, triggering her sense of fight or flight and sending them both sprawling into the weapon’s rack.

“I am  _ so  _ sorry,” he reached to help her up but she slapped his hands away on instinct. 

Sara did a mental check of her own body and her inventory only came up with a slight twinge in her side. She rolled to her knees and pressed her hand to the rapidly growing blood stain on the grey tank top she’d been working out in.  _ Well fuck _ .

“Shit!” Wally cried at the same time Zari, who had been working at her computer terminal on the other side of the room, shouted, “Sara!”

“It’s fine,” she all but growled, fighting the red haze that threatened to overtake her brain.

“Go get Amaya,” Zari shoved Wally towards the door and knelt next to the captain. Her hands fluttered in indecision but couldn’t find an opening to help. “Tell me what to do,” she hedged on panic, “I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“Breath with me for a second,” Sara muttered, working to clear her senses and grabbing the other woman’s fluttering hands in her free one. 

“You’ve been stabbed and are actively bleeding and you want me to meditate with you?” Zari huffed, incredulous at the captain's answering smirk. 

“No,” she stood with Zari’s support and gestured to the first aid kit under the tech workstation, “I need to focus and I can’t do that if you’re freaking out.” 

The totem bearer scoffed but retrieved the kit and turned back around just as Sara finished pulling her tank top off over her head, “ _ holy shit _ .”

“What?” Sara twisted to look down at the slowly trickling wound in her side, “It’s not that bad.”

“Sara! Are you okay?” Amaya had finally made it into the gym followed quickly by Wally, Nate and Ray all clamoring over one another. 

“I’m fine,” she waved them all off and opened the med kit to pull out antiseptic wipes, “It’s not deep. It won’t scar and I don’t even need stitches.”

“ _ While I trust your medical expertise, Captain Lance- _ ” 

“I know more than you think, Gideon,” Sara sing-songed as she swapped out the bloody wipe for a package of square gauze. 

“- _ I would appreciate it if you made your way to the Medical Bay for my second opinion. _ ”

-

Sara didn’t particularly want to go, but her entire team was taking the AI’s side and Wally looked near tears so she made her way to the Med Bay and let Gideon seal the wound. She was taking Gideon’s gentle ribbing about her dedication to her collection of scars when Zari showed up with a clean shirt and hoodie for her. She stood indecisive in the doorway and after a moment the blonde took pity on her. “You can ask.” 

“What?” Zari frowned at her as she forced herself to look the other woman in the eyes.

“Whatever’s on your mind,” she shrugged as she pulled on the fresh shirt, “Best way to get a straight answer is to ask a straight question.”

“I didn’t think you did anything straight,” Zari snarked automatically.

Sara chuckled and they shared a small, stilted smile before the totem bearer rubbed her palms together and forged ahead. “You’re scars,” she blurts out before she can think twice about it, “I, uh, saw them earlier.” Unabashed, Sara lifted the shirt she’d just put on to gesture at the small grouping of puckered scars that marred her abdomen and Zari nodded even as she averted her eyes, “Yeah, those ones. I just was wondering how you- how did you  _ survive  _ that?”

Sara tugged the shirt back down and gave Zari a confused frown. “Well, I,” she pressed her hand over her stomach, tapping her fingers like she could still feel the scars under the material, “I didn’t.”

Zari blinked at her, not sure what to make of that. “What do you mean you didn’t?” Sara was standing before her- talking, breathing,  _ living _ . 

“I didn’t think it was a secret, Z,” Sara shrugged. At that point it felt more like a running joke, talking about her death like it was just another passing part of her. Like her blonde hair, blue eyes and dimpled chin.

“Yeah, but I thought it was like a code on the operating table, don’t go into the light, back in under a minute sort of died.” 

Sara gives her a wry smile, “Nope, it was a three arrows to the gut, fell off a roof and broke my back, dead and buried for like a year, sort of died.”

“And you just,” Zari collapsed backwards onto the spare MedBay chair and gestured weakly at the blonde, “you just came back from that?”

Sara picked up the hoodie she had set down earlier and tugged the material through her hands. “Most of me,” she pulled the soft cloth on, needing more layers between her and the world suddenly, “Lances are very stubborn.”

“And your soul,” Zari pushed, more curious now, “It was just waiting in Purgatory the whole time?”

There it was, Sara thought, someone finally asks. 

“No, Z, it wasn’t.” The other woman frowned at her, but Sara looked away before they could make eye contact, not wanting to see what might greet her there, “Let’s just say, John isn’t the only one who knows how his story ends.”

-

“Am I interrupting?”

Sara didn’t shift her eyes from where they focused on the flickering flame of the candle in front of her. She sat with her back straight and palms gently resting on her folded knees. “Of course not,” she murmured, barely moving her mouth to speak, “Private quarters aren’t meant to be private or anything.”

Amaya chuckled and sat opposite her on the floor. “Are you meditating?” she asked in a light, teasing tone.

Sara rolled her shoulders and then her eyes so she could look up at her friend in the low light, “Not anymore. Something I can help you with?”

“Everything okay?” Amaya asked without preamble.

She thought back to the moment in the gym when the bloodlust had tried to cloud her higher thought process, but shrugged instead and reached for the cup of tea that curled steam lazily at her side, “Peachy keen.”

“Zari told me what you guys talked about in the MedBay, she’s worried about you.”

“Is she now?” Sara raised her eyebrows in genuine surprise, “I didn’t think she even liked me.”

“She’s not terribly fond of you, no,” Amaya grinned and accepted the fresh cup of tea that Sara poured for her from a thermos, amused and impressed Sara would have the forethought to expect her.

The blonde grinned back, but it looked hollow in the flickering light, “I can’t really blame her. I’m fifty-fifty on it most days, myself.”

She took a sip and hummed in surprise at the sharp flavor. “Do you want to talk about it?” she finally asked when it became apparent Sara had no intention of pressing forward. 

“About my self-loathing?” she smirks, intentionally misinterpreting, “Only if you break out the Martin puppet.”

But Amaya returned a flat look, not in the mood to deal with the captain’s casually deflecting humor. “About you telling Zari your soul was in Hell,” she set the cup down and reached out to rest her palms on the other woman’s knees. “Sara,” she spoke solemnly, as if trying to convey just how serious she was by tone alone, “you went to Hell.”

“Amaya,” she dropped her voice to match her friend’s, slightly mocking, and slipped her hands under her friend’s to give them a gentle squeeze, “I’ve always known where I end up. It wasn’t a surprise to me and it really shouldn’t be to you either.”

“But it doesn’t have to be like that anymore.  _ You _ don’t have to be like that anymore. You’ve been given a second chance, at life and here with the Legends,” her eyes were bright and hopeful, “That doesn’t have to be the end of your story anymore.”

Sara shook her head and pulled her hands free, chest tight and overwhelmed by the earnest nature of Amaya’s plea. The warrior probably understood her better than anyone else on the ship, but she was still so damn noble and honorable that she would never be able to understand what Sara did. That her story was already over and her soul existed on this plane purely on borrowed time. The bill had already come due and she knew the price. There was no saving Sara Lance.

The flickering of the candle started to burn her eyes so she snuffed the flame between her fingertips and asked Gideon to turn on the lights in a subdued voice. She rolled to her knees so she could stand just as Amaya reached a weakly shaking hand out to her. “Sara?” her voice shook as well, pleading. 

Sara took her hand between her own and pulled her up, realizing with quiet suddenness that it wasn’t the fate of her soul that Amaya was so worried about, it was her own. The blonde wasn’t the only one who had taken lives in a rage, Amaya herself had crossed that line and was having a hard time navigating her own way back. Especially without the guiding comfort of her family’s totem at her call. 

“Amaya,” she reached out and curled a hand around the taller woman’s elbow, “You and I are not the same. Not by a long shot. It wasn’t any one thing that damned me. I didn’t sell my soul when I knelt before Ra’s al Ghul and joined the League. I was  _ born  _ with darkness in me. And I was so lost for so long that when Nys-” she stops, chest tight and fingers twitching, “- when the League took me in they helped me to make sense of that darkness, they put it to the test and molded it into a tool that I could control and use. They sure as hell weren’t perfect, but I needed the lessons they taught me. I needed to be put in a direction where I could do  _ something good _ with this,” she tapped her chest with a closed fist, not sure how to convey the emptiness she had felt for so long. “But you,” she gently tapped Amaya under the chin to get her to look her in the eyes before laying her hand flat across the warrior’s chest, merely reinforced by the strong if slightly erratic heartbeat she felt under her palm, “You are so full of light that it’s honestly hard to look at you sometimes.”

Amaya scoffs out a laugh, pulling out of Sara’s hold to rub at her suddenly wet eyes.

“I’m serious, Mya. I have done terrible things, more than you could possibly know, for the sake of my own survival. But you? You have only ever tried to help people, protect and defend them. We both know that there are monsters in this world but I can say with absolute certainty that you are  _ not one of them _ .”

“How?” Amaya crossed her arms and pulled tightly into herself, “How can you be so sure?” 

“Because I’ve known them, I’ve learned from them and I know the price of surviving them. And I know you. Trust me,” she caught Amaya’s eyes and shrugged, “you don’t even come close.”

The warrior nodded shallowly, lips pressed and brow furrowed. She may not completely believe Sara in that moment, but the captain knew she would take her words with her and hold them to a light later on because they were open and honest and came from Sara’s heart.

She picked up the candle, discarded cups and thermos while Amaya watched her with sad, shimmering eyes. “I know you think you are one of your monsters, Sara, but I have to tell you I find it very hard to believe at times like these.”

“I am whatever I have to be.”

-

Smoke curls around her legs, lazy and thick. Lightning flashes and she’s in a cell on the Amazo, thunder rattles the bars and men howl. A  _ crack  _ and a  _ bang _ and grenade shrapnel tears apart her calf as she dives through the dense air. Thea’s lifeless eyes seem to look right through her from down the gleaming shaft of an arrow. Deep rolling laughter rips a shudder down her spine. Her name flickers across a tombstone. She drops to her knees at Laurel’s gravesite. The smell of cigarettes and iron burn acrid and strong in her nose and down her throat, choking her. Nyssa stares up at her in confused shock as poison snakes its way into her bloodstream.

A hand grabs her wrist and she wrenches it away, there’s a flash of silver and dead green eyes are looking up at her. A gunshot goes off and leaves a ringing in her ears. Dread settles in her gut. A guttural cry echoes around her. A child screams.

There is blood on her hands.

-

  
  


Sara bolted upright, trying desperately to catch her breath. Sweat dripped from her brow and down her back and she shivered as it cools rapidly in the artificial air. Silently, she lowers her head into her hands, rakes her hands through her hair, and tries to regain her four count breathing technique to drop her heart rate and force the red haze back from the corners of her vision. 

Nightmares were nothing new, she’d had them for years. But this was different. This was more. 

Mallus was tugging on the chit of her soul, calling on every dark corner of her mind, and Sara was finding it harder to push back against his call. 

“Gideon,” she gasps, throwing off her sheets and swinging her legs out of bed.

“ _ Would you like me to ready the jumpship, Captain _ ?”

“Yeah, could you-”

“- _ Star City, 2018. _ ”

“You’re too good to me, Gideon.”

-

“Hey, sis,” Sara dropped down to the dew damp grass off to the left of the tombstone. Setting a small bundle of purple hyacinths and baby’s breath against the carved stone, she draws in a deep and settling breath she lets her fingertips trace along the letters of Laurel’s name. 

“Sorry I haven’t been to see you in a while, things have been a little crazy. I don’t even know where to start. I mean, I broke time,” she blows out a breath and draws her knees up to her chest and hugs them close, “That was really bad. Merlyn and Darhk - can you believe those two assholes teamed up? The guy who killed me and the guy who killed you, that was fucking wild. Any way, they got a hold of the Holy Lance and rewrote reality with this speedster and that was terrible. We fixed it, eventually, but to do it I had to break  _ a ton _ of rules. What else is new, right? Sara Lance coasts through disaster while wreaking absolute havoc with no regard for those around her.”

She sighs and begins plucking out individual blades of grass. “I had the Lance in my hands, I had the chance to rewrite reality however I wanted and it would stick. I could’ve brought you back, but I guess you already knew that? You were there, I think. But to change anything, I would have to change everything and I- how could I just erase all of it?”

“But it’s whatever,” she stretches her legs out behind the tombstone, “because I ended up loosening the bars on a time demon that decided to anchor himself to my damned soul and Nora freaking Darhk’s, who’s just a kid.  _ A kid _ , Laurel, and I don’t know if I’m strong enough to save her and myself. I’m trying, but I keep getting knocked down and it’s getting harder to get back up every time. I just- I’m so tired, Laul.”

-

She sat there for some time more, telling Laurel’s headstone about the adventures of the Legends even after she felt the presence of another person join her, just on the outskirts of her awareness. When she let her stories fall into a lull and a semi-comfortable silence descended over the cemetery, the presence shifted and approached. 

“Can’t say I expected it to be you,” she spoke into the quiet, “How did you find me?”

“I asked Felicity to let me know the next time you were in town,” Nyssa’s lightly accented voice answered as she came to a stop just behind where Sara still sat. They were not touching but she could feel the heat of the other woman at her back. 

“Do I even want to know how she knew I was in town?”

“I have learned that when it comes to Felicity Smoak it is better not to ask.”

“Did she tell you that I was here?”

“No,” there was a moment of palpable hesitation and then Nyssa touched her hand to top of Sara’s head and slowly threaded her fingers through long blonde locks, “I knew this is where you would be.”

Suddenly and inexplicably overwhelmed, Sara felt tears well in her eyes and she swallowed them back harshly. But she couldn’t help herself from shifting to rest her back against Nyssa’s shins and thighs. “And why are you here looking for me?” 

Nyssa gives a gentle tug to encourage Sara to roll her head back and look up and into her dark eyes, “You are in pain,  _ habibti, _ where else would I be?”


	3. Drowned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grief and guilt and the Lance sisters seemed to all go hand in hand.

“You’ve lost your way,  _ habibti _ .” 

Felicity’s message hadn’t made much sense to her - demons and damned souls - but Nyssa was able to parse out the important bit. Sara Lance was drowning. She was being pulled under by some darkness looming ominous on the horizon and Felicity seemed convinced that she needed help to find her way back. So Nyssa had jumped, action immediate, because it was Sara and her natural instinct whenever her beloved went under was to pull her up and out. 

It felt only logical to find Sara at her sister’s gravesite. She need not have been with the woman for the last four years to know her or to know that when Sara’s moral compass would begin to spin wildly off course and she was feeling lost to the darkness that she would call upon the thought of her sister, the light of the good and honorable soul of Dinah Laurel Lance and use it like a needle pointing true north to reorient herself. Ironically, Laurel would often do the same with Sara’s determination and fortitude whenever she herself felt overwhelmed and insignificant. Nyssa found it lovely and devastating, that each thought the other the best of them.

“I thought I knew what I was doing, but I only seem to make things worse,” Sara sighed and curled her hands around her knees. “I keep thinking, if I can do this - if I can be this hero in the light that Laurel saw in me, that it won’t hurt as much. Losing her. Not being here for her. But I can’t get my footing and I keep letting her down.”

“Oh, Sara,” Nyssa dropped to her knees and drew Sara into her, wishing desperately to banish those thoughts straight from her head but knowing they were likely forever ingrained in the core of her being. She glanced at Laurel’s engraved name and felt her heart squeeze painfully in her chest, this was not the right place for the conversation they needed to have. There was too much pain here. For both of them. 

-

They end up in a 24 hour diner not terribly far from the cemetery. It’s small with very few exposed windows and nearly deserted and Sara is not surprised when Nyssa leads her towards the back corner of the establishment where she can keep a watchful eye on all of the exits and people in the space. When the blonde easily slides into the booth opposite of Nyssa, with her back to the front door, she is given a faintly fond look, recognizing that she is being trusted to keep them both safe for the moment. 

They don’t speak for a while, comfortable in the silence while they wait for the waitress to bring them their drinks with an exhausted smile. Nyssa drips the slightest bit of honey into her Earl Grey (the diner’s selection is severely limited) and watches curiously as Sara takes a tentative sip of her coffee - black and bitter.

When they were together in a place where coffee was served, she used to drown it in cream and sugar until it tasted more like candy than coffee.

Noticing the look she was getting, Sara drags the corner of her mouth up in a forced and somewhat apologetic half smile. “Nothing tastes the same since I came back,” she offers as an explanation and something inside of Nyssa cracks. 

She had only seen Sara twice since she left Nanda Parbat more than four years earlier to begin her hunt for Malcolm Merlyn, but both times were so brief and emotionally charged that it wasn’t until days after that she was truly able to understand that the moments were real, that they had actually even happened. So she allows herself the luxury of just watching her beloved, taking in the new lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. She looks older, even more so than the expected amount, weary and wary and sad. There are dark smudges under her eyes, like bruises, that jump out against the pallor of her skin and wash out her freckles. Her blue eyes do not shine and the laughter and stubborn thrill that Nyssa had fallen for is absent from every inch of her. 

The woman before her was not necessarily the one she had fallen in love with, but it was a facet of her that she knew probably just as well. This was the woman she had pulled out of the North China Sea; haunted and defeated but still willing to push herself until she is forced to collapse under the weight of her own shadow. 

“Laurel told me that you two became really good friends,” Sara murmured and wrapped her hands around the warm mug before her, breaking the silence and pulling Nyssa from her thoughts. “She said that you stepped in and helped to train her when Ollie wouldn’t. That you helped to make her stronger and gave her a fighting chance, let her to prove herself.”

Nyssa nodded, letting the fondness and sorrow of the words wash against her. Her friendship with Laurel had not felt natural at the beginning, she had still carried so much hurt and anger - they both had - but it had evolved organically and the loss of her had shattered Nyssa nearly as much as the loss of Sara had. Grief and guilt and the Lance sisters seemed to all go hand in hand.

“I was glad to hear it,” Sara pressed on, dragging the pad of one finger around the rim of the mug, “that you two were able to find each other and be there for one another while I was…” - dead - “...gone.”

Unbidden, Nyssa felt her face curl into a sneer. It all still felt so raw after all that time. "It wasn't enough. I didn’t make her strong enough. I couldn’t make either of you strong enough to survive the evils of this world.”

“Nyssa,” Sara balked at the venom in the assassin's tone, “you seriously can’t think that you're responsible for anything to do with Laurel's death. Trust me, you didn’t fail her. She was-” the blonde stopped and blinked, looking down to realize she had taken Nyssa’s hands in her own. Sara gave them a gentle squeeze and allowed her own pain to soften the words, “She was always meant to die that night.” There were tears in her eyes, she could feel them welling up heavily against her lashes and tried to blink them away, “There is nothing that anyone could have done differently to change that.”

“You don’t know that,” Nyssa hisses, pulling her hands free and curling them into fists, “You can’t possibly know that.”

“I can actually,” Sara lays her suddenly empty palms flat against the table top, willing them to stop visibly shaking but failing miserably. “Captain of a time ship, remember? I’ve run Zari’s program half a dozen times. Billions of outcomes, every one terrible and most don’t change anything.”

Nyssa kept her eyes on Sara’s hands - they had always been such a fascination to her, strong and slim and glittering with rings she had never been allowed to wear in the League - and managed to swallow back her own pain enough to remember she was never the only one hurting. “Zari’s program?” she asked, wanting to reach out and have her hand held once more.

Sara pulled her hands back and into her lap. “It's a probability program designed by my engineer to look for a way to alter individual histories without affecting the overall timeline.”

“And that is a thing you are allowed to do,” Nyssa frowned, thinking of Black Siren and alternate worlds. 

“Strictly speaking? No. Not at all.” Sara offered her a slight smile, a rebellious light flashing in the deep of her blue eyes that was familiar and warm to Nyssa. 

Still though, this weight had been on her shoulders for so long and Nyssa had never dared dream that she would be free of it. “You really don’t blame me?”

“Of course not,” Sara looks genuinely surprised by the notion, like the thought that any of the horrors of that night could be traced back to Nyssa’s failings had never occurred to her. “Nyssa, as probably one of the world’s top authorities on Lance pigheadedness you have to know that once she set her mind to it, there was no stopping her. She made her choice on her own. We both did."

-

They ask for the check and Nyssa lays down a few bills to cover their half finished drinks because Sara, for whatever reason, only has a handful of Spanish doubloons in her pocket. 

(“Do I want to know?” Nyssa had asked with a beautifully arched eyebrow.

Sara gave her a cheeky grin and offered her one of the coins but no explanation. Nyssa took it with a roll of her eyes.) 

Standing outside the diner and adjusting to the temperature of the twilight Nyssa reaches out to touch her fingertips to Sara's shoulder. “This was not meant to be about me,” she admonishes, gently rubbing at her eyes to clear them of residual tears.

“Maybe not,” Sara pushes her fists deep into the pockets of her jacket and begins the journey back to the cemetery, resolutely staring forward, “But I think you needed to hear it.”

“Is this what you do now? You take care of others?” she asks lowly, watching Sara from the corner of her eye and trying to reconcile her with all the versions of her she had known and the one from earlier that evening. She looked calmer now and not seconds away from crumbling but she still looked unsettled.

She catches the motion of Sara’s shrug as she answers, “Part of the job.”

“Ah,” Nyssa hums, like she'd caught her in a trap, “But I am not a member of your crew.” 

“Doesn’t mean you aren’t someone I care about.”

It’s said so casually and off the cuff, that it actually makes Nyssa stop. Sara actually walks a few more paces before she realizes she is alone and turns to look back at the darker woman curiously. Nyssa cocks her head to the side, trying to take in all of her with one glance, “Do you? Care about me?”

“Of course,” Sara frowns at her, eyebrows drawn down in confusion. Her hands are still in the pockets of her jacket, shoulders rolled forward to make herself look small and Nyssa is reminded of Felicity’s voice in her message, how she had been worried enough to reach out to Nyssa despite the hacker’s obvious reservations about her.

“And who takes care of you?” she finds herself wanting to know, she wants a name so she can track them down to the ends of the earth and throttle them for what a poor job they have been doing. But Sara doesn’t have an answer for her, she can see that in the guarded look of her blue eyes. The blonde had never trusted easily and her personal circle only ever seemed to shrink. “Felicity asked me about the Lazarus Pit, about the toll it takes on a soul and the susceptibility to demon possession,” she breaks the stillness with sudden seriousness, “I’ve just spent the last few days with Thea Queen and her trouble is of a different nature. Will you please tell me what is going on, Sara?”

“Primordial time demon is using the fractures in time that I accidentally created to weaken its prison and escape so he can destroy the known universe and rule over all of time and space,” Sara replies in a deadpan, staring down the assassin like a challenge.

Nyssa had never been one to back down from a challenge, especially not one issued by Sara Lance. It was one of the hallmarks of their relationship. “Well,” she started walking again, “You’ve certainly never done anything by the half, have you?”

“Well, you know what they say,” she spun on her heel and hurried to catch up to Nyssa, “Go big or go home. I can’t exactly go home so I might as well go big.”

Nyssa allows that comment to slip through the cracks but stores it away for further evaluation later on. “Tell me,” she commands, taking the choice to share out of Sara’s hands and knowing it would lessen the burden of having to ask for help. 

So Sara tells her. She skips around the story, backtracking when more information is needed to help Nyssa understand and answering the questions that are asked in a gentle and non-judgmental way. The mess of Sara’s trials are laid out before her and all along their walk Nyssa is reminded of just how strong her beloved is and how deeply she feels those moments where her strength is not enough. 

They made it to the cemetery in what felt like the blink of an eye, but continued on to circle the block several times in order to give Sara the time to finish her story. As she unloads, Nyssa watches the way her body uncoils and shoulders lift and even though her voice turns gravelly with use it loses some of its edge and genuine tiredness begins to replace the bone deep weariness it had been laced with. 

When Sara runs out of words and Nyssa is caught up to present day they continue on until a faint buzzing sound interrupts the stilted silence and draws Nyssa’s gaze to a modified cell phone that Sara pulls from her back pocket. Over the identification picture of what appeared to be a small mechanized sun someone named  _ Gideon  _ was calling. 

“ _ Captain Lance, _ ” an accented feminine voice calls out when Sara connects the call, _ “I do apologize for the interruption but Dr. Palmer has informed me that he is ready to begin his experiments with the cold fusion reactor.” _

“Alright, thanks for the heads up,” Sara squeezes her eyes shut and pinches the bridge of her nose with her free hand, “Could you do me a favor and download a copy of Ray’s fire prevention and awareness guide to the jumpship for me? Forward copies to Amaya and Zari’s tablets as well. And see if Amaya can get Wally to check all the extinguishers and clear the airlock.”

“ _ Right away, Captain. Will you be heading back soon?” _

“Yeah, I wouldn’t leave you alone while Ray’s potentially blowing stuff up in the lab.”

_ “I do so appreciate that, Captain Lance.” _

“See you soon, Gid.” She hangs up the phone and taps the edge of it against her forehead in thought. Nyssa watches as her face shifts from tense to weary to blank before she draws in a deep breath and seems to settle herself into a more solid version of the woman she had spent the last few hours with. Someone with responsibilities, someone who is the pillar of strength that an entire crew would lean the whole of their weight on. 

“Who is Gideon?” The question jumped unbidden to her lips, escaping before Nyssa can think of why that was the most important bit of information she desires from that exchange. She does not remember a Gideon from the stories she had just heard.

Sara blinks up at her slowly, like she was waking up from a dream, and dips her chin so she is watching Nyssa almost from the corner of her eyes. Nyssa feels her breath catch at the familiarity of that look. The tips of her ears heat up as Sara shoots her a curious half smile, “Are you jealous?”

She scoffs and resists the urge to step back and put distance between them. She was absolutely  _ not _ jealous. She had no reason to be. They hadn’t been together in years and Nyssa couldn’t care less who Sara was going home to on her time ship.

“She’s the AI on my ship.”

“What?” Nyssa blinks back at her.

“Gideon,” Sara tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear and looks moderately apologetic, “She’s the AI on the  _ Waverider _ , pretty much runs the whole operation. The rest of us are just muscle and window dressing, really.”

Nyssa feels her confusion like a physical thing, “She’s a computer program.”

Sara raises a hand and makes a wavering motion, “I’m pretty sure she’d find that offensive, but basically? I guess? A computer program who’s a mother hen with a really dry sense of humor and a bit of an attitude.”

“I do not know what that means,” Nyssa admits, trying to wrap her mind around it but can only imagine it as Felicity Smoak trapped in a computer screen. 

Sara laughs, the sound light and familiar and enough for Nyssa to feel it deep in her chest. “I guess you kind of have to meet her to get it.”

They come to the end of their walk in an open field near the woods behind the cemetery and as Sara fiddles with her phone some more the space before them shimmers and shifts to reveal the jumpship. The door hisses open and Sara visibly hesitates, “Is it weird that I don’t want to say goodbye?”

Nyssa feels relief flood her, she had been dreading having to watch Sara walk away from her one more from the moment she had laid eyes on her earlier in the evening. But she knew that Sara would not be able to stay, she had too much waiting for her beyond this place. And Nyssa would not be staying there either, her own mission calling her away to distant lands. “You will be alright,  _ habibti _ ,” Nyssa tries to reassure her. 

Sara nods, but her eyes are downcast and her mouth is pulled to one side in an uncertain gesture. She looks up at the jumpship and seems to come to a decision before turning back abruptly and catching Nyssa’s eyes. “Can I call you?” she asks in a rush, like she is afraid that she would not get the whole question out if she took the time. 

“I leave tomorrow with Thea and Roy,” Nyssa presses her lips into a frown, disappointed, “I am not sure when we will be back.”

“Right,” Sara nods in understanding, recalling what Nyssa had told her earlier about what she was doing in Star City in the first place, “Lazarus pits probably aren’t located in areas known for their cell service.”

“I imagine not.”

But Sara had never been one to be deterred easily, not when she had made up her mind about something.

“If I gave you this, would you take it?” the captain held out the phone that she had used to make the jumpship appear. “Zari helped Gideon boost the signal so we can get contact through the temporal zone to pretty much anywhere. It pretty much only fritzed out when we’re Prehistoric.”

Nyssa chooses to let that one slide as well and tucked her own hands into the pockets of her jacket. There was little more she wanted than to have a direct line to Sara Lance but she had been burned more than once by taking the other woman’s hand without question. 

“Why?”

Sara doesn’t look like she knows how to answer, like she doesn’t know how to explain herself. Or more likely she didn’t know how to put herself out there and risk being turned down. “That’s what friends do, right?”

“We have never been friends, Sara.” 

The words are simple. True. Unapologetically honest. Nyssa had plucked the blonde from the sea, nursed her back to health and after a fit of uncharacteristic indecision whisked her away to Nanda Parbat for training. They had gone from strangers to student and mentor to lovers in such a whirlwind that it was years before Nyssa could even remember a time before Sara. But friends? No. Nyssa and Sara had never been anything of the like.

“But could we be? Or something? I just- I don’t think I can get on this ship and not know when or if I’m ever going to talk to you again.”

Her hands are shaking as every thought and emotion are laid bare in her bright blue eyes and Nyssa hasn’t seen her this emotional since her return to the League. She remembers the sight of Sara dropping to her knees, tears leaving tracks through the dust that had stained her cheeks from her climb through the mountains. She remembers Quentin and Laurel telling her the toll it took for Sara’s to return to the League, to her, and herself thinking that they couldn’t even imagine the half of it. 

Her heart feels like it’s breaking all over again. She should have never allowed Sara to take the vow and kneel before her father a second time. 

It had been so long before she had been able to look back and realize the truth of the matter, that it was actually no small wonder that they hadn’t worked out. They had both been so young and so vastly different. Though Nyssa had traveled all around the world she had been the more sheltered of the two, so dependent and devoted to her father’s mission that nothing else had ever come close to pulling her from her set upon path. Not until Sara, traumatized and scrappy Sara, had laughed delightedly at Ra’s al Ghul’s over the top show of strength that had left men twice her size quaking and Nyssa felt her heart stutter and beat for what felt like the first time. 

And Sara, who was raised in a semi-sheltered home with a devoted father, mother and older sister, had been made hard and jaded by being passed about by Oliver Queen, Anthony Ivo and Slade Wilson for their own bleeding purposes and missions. She had not seen the whole of the world, had not felt the luxuries or seen the beauties of distant countries and cultures, but she knew it’s hardships intimately and had been forced to learn the lengths she would be willing to go to in order to survive. And even as Ta-er al-Sahfer had knelt before Ra’s al Ghul and swore her life to him and his mission, Sara Lance knew enough to hold back a part of herself. She would never again give her whole self over to any man to do with what he will.

She had been right to, in the end. That was something Nyssa would never have been able to see at the time. Indeed, she knows now she could never have fathomed it at the time Sara had stolen away in the middle of the night. It wasn’t until she had stood on that overpass and watched Sara walk the streets of Starling City, watched Oliver Queen watch Sara, and pressed her fingers to the knife at her belt and realized that she did not know what she was going to do that the idea that her father might not the omnipotent and all knowing being she had thought he was. 

Everything that happened after that between her, her father, the League, Malcolm Merlyn and Oliver Queen, only just cemented that fact and had made her decision to disband the League all the easier. It had nothing to do with leaving the air absolutely clear about where Nyssa stood about Sara having to feign any loyalty to her former life. 

Well, it had very little to do with that at the time.

Nyssa had even looked into the last few missions her father had sent Sara on, the evils she had been ordered to replace with death - the ones she claimed to have ripped unmendable tears through her soul. What Nyssa had discovered was not reprehensible and vile men but ones who had simply been in Ra's al Ghul's way. They were a banker, a diplomat and a politician who her father had needed in some way or another who had chosen to tell him no. They did not deserve to die by the League standard the Nyssa had been raised to believe but Sara had taken their lives anyway because that was what she had been sent to do, what Nyssa had helped train her to do. 

No wonder she had felt the need to run. She had been promised a purpose and been made into nothing more than a tool to be wielded by yet another man with delusions of grandeur. And Nyssa honestly knows that she would not have been able to choose her beloved, not then, not when she was still so indoctrinated to the Demon's Head.

Now though? 

Nyssa was more worldwise, more guarded and heartsick, but more trusting of her own judgement and more willing to forgive herself and others. And Sara seemed much more cautious, not hesitant but perhaps more aware that her actions had consequences and that she may not be the only one caught up in the backflash. Neither of them were who they were when they had been head over heels in love, but Nyssa thinks that given their situation that those two women had been doomed from the start. 

“You will call me?” she asks finally, “You will continue to keep in contact? You will not disappear on me once more?”

“I won’t disappear on you,” Sara shakes her head emphatically, “Not like that, not again.”

But maybe the people they are now, the ones who have lost everything and been pulled back and off unfathomable ledges, are better suited for something stable. Something real. Nyssa thinks, possibly, she would like to try and be friends with this Sara Lance. 

“Then I will take your phone and you may call me, when you need me.”

“Thank you, Nyssa,” relief tumbles from her lips, “And you can call me too, if you want. Whenever. Or for whatever.”

“I- thank you.” She presses her hands over Sara’s as she passes her the phone, letting herself linger so she could feel the warm pulse of life at the blonde’s wrists. If this is what it took to keep Sara in her life then she was willing to make the effort. 

-

Hours after they had put Star City in the rearview mirror, Nyssa had the thought to actually check the device that Sara had given her. There were three unread message notifications on the display from earlier that day. She glanced subtly at Thea in the driver’s seat to make sure her attention was purely on the road and slid her finger across the screen. 

_ hey _

_ made it back to the ship alright _

_ thanks for everything tonight _

Nyssa pressed her lips to suppress a grin. It was silly that she was so touched that Sara had thought to let her know she’d gotten back safely but hey had spent so much of their previous relationship separated by assignments, out of contact and simply waiting to see if the other would return in one piece that it was refreshing to start this new one with a new set of standards.

_ Of course.  _ She typed out slowly.  _ I do hope Dr. Palmer has not blown anything up in your absence. _

She sent the message before she could think better of it, thumbs twitching as she mentally parsed out everything she still wanted to say to Sara from what was appropriate.

“ _ Holy shit _ ,” Thea’s voice rang out, startling her, “Since when do you carry a phone from this century?”

Nyssa tapped a button on the side of the device and the screen went dark. “Since yesterday,” she frowned as she answered, seeing no reason to lie and not terribly fond of the incredulous tone of Thea’s voice. She wasn’t a complete Luddite.

“Did Felicity give you that?” It was a reasonable assumption, but Nyssa found herself bristling at the implication that the tech genius could be the only source.

“No,” she tucked the phone away, “Sara did.”

“Sara? Sara Lance?” Thea’s tone was pitched in absolute disbelief, like there was possibly some other Sara that Nyssa would know and have stolen away to see while they had been dealing with Athena and her murderous group. And when she narrowed her eyes and nodded, Thea swallowed her incredulousness and tried for a more conversational tone, “When did you see Sara?”

Nyssa continued to watch her like she was a few cards shy of a full deck. “Yesterday,” she answered after a deliberate pause and Thea looked like she wanted to smack herself on the forehead.

“Right,” she groaned, “That makes sense.”

They let an uncomfortable silence settle over them, punctuated by Roy’s gentle snoring in the back seat before Thea gave a sudden gasp and turned wide eyes and a wider smile at the passenger seat. “Oh my god! That’s why you annulled your weird marriage to my brother!”

Nyssa crossed her arms over her chest and deliberately looked away as she pressed herself into the seat, beyond annoyed and desperately hoping that the light blush she could feel spreading up her neck wasn’t visible in the low light.

**Author's Note:**

> a whim to write and post. not beta'd so all mistakes are mine. nothing belongs to me except my frustrations


End file.
